If you’re a masochist

Okay I kinda get the gist of things, thanks for all the answers! :)

I’ve looked at what games I have downloaded on my PC, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need Windows. I’ll be playing steam games and do some emulation.

Mostly for gamepass. But you can install windows like you would on any other PC.

I’d say no, if you find yourself needing windows for something specific you could always install it onto a usb stick and boot from that.

Xbox game pass, incompatible games, there are lots of reasons, but valve managed to work around so many things with steamOS that these reasons are each time fewer

Game compatibility

There are a rare handful of games that need it, stuff that needs to run specific software to fake server access for dead MMOs, that sort of thing, but that ends up feeling like a list of “maybe someday someone will solve the puzzle of how to put it on Deck,” not “valid reason to dual boot.”

The Deck has made me a Linux convert, and every day compatibility through official channels and Proton fixes gets better and better. DSMapStudio, for making FromSoft mods, now works with Proton Experimental, no extra Wine stuff needed. Compatibility only improves over time

I went and installed it as dual boot at the start, never used it except once so my grandma could play spider solitaire. After three months I reinstalled the whole deck and left out windows.

Games with DRM, anti cheat or to get access to Xbox game pass. They are working on a easier way to dual boot. Maybe that’s an option

You CAN run almost anything so you most likely will never need Windows, but some apps just don’t work, even with proton/bottles/etc. There are workarounds for stuff like other game launchers or Xbox Game Pass, but they don’t work perfectly.

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Personally I recommend installing Windows To Go on an external ssd if you ever need to run something that you can’t use on Linux.

r/WindowsOnDeck could be a good place to ask this question, too.

I don’t think you’ll get any different answer than you’ve already received here, though. Compatibility and services are the main reasons.

For compatibility questions, use https://www.protondb.com.

You need to have a use case for windows.

For me, I like having microsoft office there in case I need to do some work. One other reason was to play War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. I could only find a version on the net many many years ago and it does not come with an installer. So to play it, I had to use windows. Absolutely love both games.

One thing that I appreciated: No need for internet connection to run the two games. I remembered I forgot to start up my downloaded games first in SteamOS and when I went to a place without internet, I could not use my SteamOS to play the games because they needed to run one time with internet first. It was a huge reminder that SteamOS is not a completely offline system. I was looking at being stuck without games for a few hours, but then I switched to Windows and played the Transformers games.

Yeah, you could have emulated games as a backup too. I am just listing out the scenarios I encountered.

The only real reason is compatibility, a lot of games and software are incompatible with Linux or require several sacrifices to the dark forces in the name of Sauron, most notably Game Pass and Easy Anti-cheat (No Valorant for us).

Gamepass native support or games with anti cheat. Everything else just works and does so better on built in Linux.

Gamepass, makes modding easier and some games just don’t work on SteamOS because of anti cheat.

Just dual boot. Best of both worlds