From my understanding Steam Decks come with SteamOS preinstalled on them. Yet when you look at the list of games on steam that are compatible with Linux + SteamOS, its a small fraction.
But what confuses me is this page
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck/mygames
It shows your games that are compatible with the Steam Deck which has a Linux based OS. And almost my entire library is compatible with the Deck. Can someone help me understand how this is possible? If games are compatible with the Steam Deck, why wouldn’t they also work on Ubuntu for example?
Games that have native Linux versions are uncommon, but Steam on Linux includes a program called Proton, which provides a Windows-compatible environment so that games made for Windows can run without being manually ported. It isn’t exactly the same, so some games don’t work quite right, which is why not every game is compatible with Steam on Linux.
Any game that’s compatible with the Steam Deck should run fine on any other Linux system, as long as the underlying hardware is powerful enough.