If Valve themselves build and sell a Steam Console (with desktop-class hardware inside a custom-designed casing and cooling solution, like Sony did with the PS5), paired with a reedition of the Steam Controller, this would be a killer successor to the failed Steam Machine experiment. IMHO everything that went wrong then is now proven mature enough to go right.

It could run the exact same OS as the Steam Deck and even dualboot a traditional desktop linux or windows (give it a 3.5" easy-access sata3 slot for a secondary drive and it's a happiness bomb for cheaper storage expansion and/or dualbooting)

Shipping SteamOS on it means effortless support for the exact same (unbeatable) range of 3rd-party controllers, VR equipment, external storages, exotic peripherals, etc

Because those are PC games, using it as a PC tower paired with kbd+mouse+monitor is a non-issue unlike traditional consoles

Using desktop-class components on it means those are easily replaceable and upgradeable for off-the-shelf standard PC parts and the extra casing space means it can be designed for easy repairability (no glue, no frail plastic clamps, less fragile flat ribbons, all components readily accessible instead of layered on top of each other), even if more compact than a standard PC case.

The OS also confers an openness to modding, 3rd-party game stores and apps, usage beyond playing games, etc that is completely unparalleled in traditional gaming consoles. This had no face outside PC gaming until the Deck appeared and effectively eliminated the division between those two gaming categories.

There will be instant access to a HUGE catalog, costless access to games already purchased on Steam, etc. And this will be even better than what's seen at launch on the Steam Deck, because the Deck-certified effort and the improvements made by game devs to conform to it all will also benefit this new device.

The larger and non-portable form-factor allows for higher-powered CPU, GPU, RAM, etc, paired with bigger active cooling fan(s) (better flow at lower noise).

They can probably even offer it in a cheaper price range than building a custom PC or buying a prebuilt one like ROG, Alienware and other gaming-branded stuff of similar performance, making this a tempting purchase for general purpose PC uses too.

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"more open"
SteamOS 3 working on more devices is a given from its inception, so IMHO this is more to do with how they'll ship it...

On the Steam Deck 1, they made the system partition read-only and set it up for A/B updates. While it's perfectly possible to enable writing to the system partition, all changes done to it are lost after major updates overwrite the system image with a nee one.

My hope is that they start shipping it like a common linux distro, with a single writeable system partition by default, and start relying more on using a Recovery Image from an USB Stick when necessary.

"localized distro websites"
I found a few important localized versions:
https://cn.ubuntu.com/ [External Link]
https://jp.ubuntu.com/ [External Link]
http://manjaro.org.cn/ [External Link]

...but there are indeed several missing localizations and there is much to be said about having no visible language selector on the website at all times even when those are available

I'm disappointed with Linux Mint's page being now exclusively in English now, since the old website at least had French and some other language too. It will probably go back to having them soon, because the page redesign is very recent, but it would be better if those never got taken down until then.
ps: there is a localized brazilian version (https://www.linuxmint.com.br/ [External Link]), but made by a community member, not by the official devs... a bit weird really, but I checked and at least it directs you to the official download page and not to malware.

"what will be different in Steam Deck 2"

this just NEEDS to be addressed: a wifi chip with proper linux support out-of-the-box, even if it costs more than the current unstable pile of junk... Valve has burned through significant user goodwill due to widespread wifi driver issues on the Deck 1... having the same issues on the new edition would be a proper scandal

a new selection of silent coolers... noise also burned through a lot if user goodwill, and they should have sourced enough parts with decent specs... planning for multi-sourcing is probably more effective than finding a new source when the design is finished

newer processor... each new generation makes a small difference in CPU power, but a nice big leap in iGPU power, which for gaming is more important and is a clear bottleneck for the Deck running stuff at better than 30 FPS

faster RAM is unlikely given it already shipped with LPDDR5, but would be a big performance win if possible to use those HBM 3D-stacked RAM chips without a prohibitively cost

having OLED as an option would be awesome too, and maybe it would help power consumption a bit when idle with black screen, etc

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I'd love if all those opensource alternative launchers/updaters/managers would team up and make storefront interfaces modular so all of them can interface with all stores and all future improvements to interfacing with a store on one would be available in all of them at once...

...a bit like Kodi plugins for downloading subtitles, for online video websites, etc

...and a bit like RetroArch and Lutris and Gnome Games all can use libretro emulation engines

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it's still a bit early to say for dure, but I feel this is a strong sign that Valve managed to open Pandora's Linux Gaming Box unto the world, and that it can't be unopened \o/

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Added an option to scale the Steam Deck user interface for external displays

does that mean people will finally be able to actually choose to output 720p to a 4k TV instead of the Deck choking trying to use FSR to upscale 540p/720p to 4k?

along the wifi issues, this is probably THE most requested change on the Steam Deck discussions, almost since day 1

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Quoting: WorMzyOnly had my deck for ~24 hours, but so far 'stable' has had issues connecting to wifi consistently, didn't log me into steam when I switched to desktop mode the first time (and consequently couldn't use the OSD keyboard to enter my password+steamcode, had to use an OTG connector to hook up a spare USB keyboard), and doesn't always switch between gaming/desktop modes when I tell it to.

Might try Preview. :P

If your issue is related to 5GHz wifi instabilities, the beta OS branch (now renamed "preview") is a good bet to get a potential fix from Valve that's being tested

if you don't want to go to preview or that fix doesn't help, here is my list of common wifi workarounds for the Deck:

1) enable developer mode, then go to the new "developer" tab in steam settings and disable wifi power savings

2) unhide your wifi ssid if hidden (hiding it is well know to not really be useful for privacy nor for security, by the way)

3) if 2,4GHz and 5GHz bands are joined in a single ssid, split them in the router configs and use only one of them

4) choose a fixed wifi channel instead of leaving it in auto (configure the same channel in both the router and the deck)

5) try a different router brand/model or a smartphone wifi hotspot... some people have issues only with certains devices but not with others

6) try an ethernet dongle instead of the deck's wifi

7) try a wifi dongle with well-known good linux support instead of using the built-in wifi chip

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Quoting: ShabbyXWhat I don't understand why is all this PE work is taking so long. You'd imagine they'd have some elf2pe tool that runs on the linker output after they build wine, what's stopping them from running it over everything all at once?

If I understand correctly, it's because those components are being rewritten from linux executables that run against the linux kernel and libs to windows executables that run inside wine

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On Proton's early days, even Windows games that could use Vulkan instead of DirectX, and adopted SDL2, had an easier time running on Proton than proprietary stacks...

Meanwhile a game like Planetary Titan: Annihilation had a linux port go completely broken on linux for AMD GPUs because of a proprietary lib they used for desingning their UI in HTML, despite the lib being available officially for linux when adopted.

This to say:
1) yes, there is a noticeable difference between native linux games and using proton, but being better than proton is as much about

2) proton is complex and frail itself so it's nice to have but not a perfect solution... years of helping people out in the Steam for Linux discussion forum on steam have shown just how much fixing proton back to help can look hopeless for the unlucky, while others can have a flawless out-of-the-box experience... it's great to have, but it would be better to have it as plan B instead of all your plan

3) running well on proton in its early days was curiously tied to the same characteristics that made other games run well as a native linux game: using opensource crossplatform libs and standards... which is waaaaay easier if done from the ground up when you first start developing a game than on after-the-fact porting (which also frequently skips that movement and entails using bundled translation layers akin to dxvk, but frequently worse... like Valve's horrible toGL or PT:A's deathtrap of a proprietary UI lib)

to me that means even if some devs only start to care about making their already released windows games run over proton instead of making them run natively on linux, there is a small step forward for them in acknowledging the platform and in possibly acknowledging the importance of crossplatform opensource libs...

then there are devs who will go for native ports after-the-fact and get burned by their original choices of proprietary libs and standards while porting (in-house or hiring external porting companies)...

some of those have taken from this experience that linux is horrible and not worth it and they didn't give up on much then because linux share was <1%, but if it's >5% it will sting to loose it due to lib XYZ that didn't behave well enough, and next game they make might start differently...

and some already develop their games as cross-platform but didn't care much for opensource libs because they only had proprietary-first ecossystems in their radar like Win10 + Xbox One series + PS4/5 + Switch + Mac, but with linux appearing on their radar they might find it now makes sense to use the opensource stuff that covers more of those platforms at once

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a Collabora dev clarified that Developer Mode does change the system from read-only to a read-write state

https://9to5linux.com/collabora-details-how-steamos-3-0-works-on-the-steam-deck [External Link]
"But Collabora also tells us that SteamOS 3.0 features a Developer Mode that lets experienced Linux users access Arch Linux’s pacman package manager to install various packages and the full power of the KDE Plasma desktop environment. The Developer Mode works by putting the system partition into read/write mode instead of the read-only mode that’s enabled by default for regular users."

I'm guessing that the Plugins developer meant that you don't loose any of the plugins and configs because they are in the userspace, but you'll have to reinstall the Plugins app to get them back to work after SteamOS3 upgrades

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i tgink the last point ShabbyX was trying to make is that those 90% that pirated the game wouldn't necessarily have bought the game instead...

it's one thing to get it for free, another to have to pay for it (and yet another to have to pay a lot, like for AAA games, and for gamers in poorer regions) if you're not that strongly interested

there are gamers who pirate a game to test it, then end up buying it later, or the sequels, etc... I'm not claiming to know if that's proportionally big or small, just that it exists and that we don't know how it affects the "with vs. without DRM" scenarios for a single game

there are also clever f...cks like Blizzard (I have to curse them given the current news), who used CD-key and CD-detection DRM on games like Starcraft, then years later released an official patch removing the DRM features from it (~ 1 decade after the initial sales, iirc?)

mother of all conjectures: would PC gaming even have become such a big thing in so many countries if there was no way to pirate software back when it started?! or would it have been just prohibitively expensive for too long?

ps: from personal experience, demos and a couple pirated games got me into it, now I have several hundred games just on steam, all legally purchased

pps: migrating to linux got me into not risking shady software sources on my PC, and that got me out of viruses and into steam for games

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