Handhelds need every bit of battery savings and performance they can get. Seems crazy to weigh them down with a bloated OS like Windows.
And before someone chimes in that Windows isn’t bloated, I would like to point out that a Pro edition of Windows comes preloaded with TikTok. The professional version of Windows, the on you pay extra for, and even it is full of bloatware.
You can remove all that on the image you use for production
But you can look at the ram and storage usage between the two and see Linux is the clear choice for anything performance related
Windows is pretty bloated, but mostly because of 30+ years of legacy stuff in the background. Almost all of the preloaded junk is the OEM’s fault. The TikTok thing is just a shortcut.
Windows is just not meant for a tiny 7” display or whatever. Bad UI experience.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
We can only hope this is the start of a trend, as Valve’s gaming-focused operating system brings many advantages over gaming portables (and maybe desktops) that run a full Windows installation.
In an increasingly competitive portable PC gaming market, being able to cut out that significant cost over Windows-based alternatives could be a big deal.
Our review of the ROG Ally highlights just how annoying it can be to have to fiddle with Windows settings on a touchscreen running “an awkwardly scaled” version of the OS.
That comes through in many little ways, like a built-in “suspend” mode, tons of battery-optimization features, and menus that are designed for a small screen and joystick navigation.
That’s a huge change from the desktop-focused “Steam Machines” era of the mid-'10s, when early versions of SteamOS could only run the relative handful of games that developers bothered to explicitly port to Linux.
That’s also a huge change from the Steam Machines era, when Ars’ testing showed that many SteamOS games ran significantly worse than their Windows counterparts on the same desktop hardware.
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Because they’ll actually get market share?
