Have a million units Steam Deck? In the absence of official numbers from Valve, this is what was announced in Academy 2022, the biggest event around the KDE project, which is taking place this year in Barcelona, ​​Spain. But before we continue with information about Steam Deck, let’s see what KDE is.

KDE is a free software project comprising the Linux desktop environment and application ecosystem. Officially called KDE Plasma, the desktop is widely known in Linux circles and stands out for its Windows-like layout (although this depends on the distribution) and almost endless customization options. In terms of applications, it has powerful tools such as the Kdenlive video editor and the Krita drawing application that have managed to carve out a niche not only outside the KDE spectrum, but also outside of Linux.

Now yes, and I will return to the topic, it is no secret that Valve is apparently pleased with the commercial performance of the Steam Deck, which has recently been made clear in plans to launch future generations of devices and in the opening of repair centers. Additionally, the company itself, best known for its digital video game platform Steam, has openly admitted that it has learned from the mistakes of the past in a clear allusion to the failure that Steam Machines were at the time.

It’s a little hard to pin down Valve’s console/mini-PC release date, as the back-to-back crises of the last few years have caused the planned December 2021 shipments to be pushed back to March 2022. Either it takes ten or seven months, the numbers aren’t bad at all seeing that it is essentially a mini-PC with a standard GNU/Linux system preinstalled, so its profile faces the world playing gamescan be considered as underground.

yes indeed selling a million units in seven or ten months would very likely mean little to Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (Xbox). if they released next gen consoles under normal market conditions and deliveries. This is evident if we see that the Nintendo Switch sold 2.7 million units in the first month after its launch. The Steam Deck is often compared to a hybrid Nintendo console, but the similarities between the two start and end with the device’s design and layout.

The Steam Deck is a 64-bit x86 mini-PC disguised as a hybrid console. It pre-installs SteamOS 3 as the operating system, which is a derivative of the popular Arch Linux distribution, to which immutability features have been added to offer a more stable ground for developers and minimize the chances of user breakage. However, it is clearly aimed at running Windows video games through Proton, a compatibility layer based on Wine, which has caused debate and some susceptibilities in the Linux community.

As we’ve said before, whether or not it’s true that a million Steam Decks have been shipped, the truth is that Valve seems to be happy with its commercial performance. If you want to know all the technical keys of this product, we invite you to take a look at our special about it, in which we describe in detail the most important components and the basic aspects of their operation when running video games in Windows.