Like @[email protected] already explained, having some strong protection of data on a device like the Steam Deck, that can easily be lost/stolen seems to be warranted.
Aside from the saved login credentials of my Steam account, there are a lot more credentials saved on it, because I love to use the desktop mode as work environment.
Having someone getting access to several accounts saved in the browser or email client would be not very great to say the least.
I basically have one (based on DeskMeet X300), although it runs on Bazzite.
Dunno if SteamOS would’ve worked back when I set it up.
I preferred Bazzite, because it provides full disk encryption out of the box whereas there’s only a kind of workaround for encrypting the user profile on SteamOS - unless you want to risk breaking all by SteamOS updates.
With current prices building 3rd party Steam Machines is about as appealing as it is for Steam releasing Steam Machines.
I would’t have that “Steam Machine” if it weren’t for repurposing the DeskMeet X300 that I already had and which I no longer needed for its formerly intended purpose (it was in the end a waste running the Proxmox Virtual Environment there and I moved the PVE to a Dell Wyse 5070).
Well, that’s gone quite off-topic. What I wanted to say was simple:
current hardware prices are such a pain in the ass and make building Steam Machine no fun!
Spot-on!
That’s what I have (gaming and working unified) both at my Steam Deck running SteamOS (with profile encryption) and my laptop running Bazzite (with FDE).
My DeskMeet is off most of the time, although it has the most beefy GPU (sporting a PowerColor Radeon RX 9060 XT, which I just managed to fit in the case) - yet it also has the highest power consumption and I rarely need that power for the games I play most often. Btw. it runs Bazzite with FDE 😉