Reading these Linux DE threads always makes me glad that the only desktop Linux I use is SteamOS.
I've been using Linux as my primary desktop environment for 19 years. It's unbelievable how little I know about Linux these days. Things just work!
The only thing that is annoying in macOS is the lack of good tiling, but there are good third party options that add tiling.
I'm partial to KDE myself, but honestly anything with a sensible panel is usable.
Yes. It'samazing how much better Linux runs when the hardware vendor actually supports Linux.
It also helps that the Steam Deck has a narrower Mission than a desktop computer.
I’m the same! I’ve never understood how people have such strong emotions when it comes to a desktop environment. They all (including Windows, macOS, and even iPadOS) feel like they are good enough to me and I enjoy switching to something different once in a while.
Steam runs on KDE on SteamOS
Game mode is a wayland session with gamescope as a WM, but it isn't controlled directly by the user. The steam client controls the WM and exposes those controls to you through menus and handles stuff like notifications and being a driver for the controller, so you could call it a DE in game mode.
More like X session running under XWayland. gamescope doesn't really expose Wayland interfaces to clients (well, technically it does expose some stuff, but I wouldn't qualify that as anything else than implementation detail - although that may have started to change recently, I've seen some stuff being done around xdg-shell there).
I'm not entirely convinced that using SteamOS can really be counted as "using KDE" in any way.
Well, I wouldn't make that statement so strong. KDE Plasma is the default desktop environment on SteamOS, it's just that it doesn't boot into its desktop environment by default (but you're two buttons away from switching into it).