Steam Deck reduces the size of SteamOS from 24 GB to 10 GB
For months now, Valve has been developing SteamOS 3.0 to release its upcoming Steam Deck portable console, bringing a redesigned interface. However, the latest SteamOS image (version 20211120.2) comes along with a big surprise, showing a significant reduction in the total file size, from 24 GB to just 10 GB of space required for the entire operating system, which will provide users with an additional 14 GB of usable space for games and applications.
That said, we should not be afraid that Valve will decide to remove the scissors since it is an optimization and not a cut of it. As reported by some media such as ComputerBase, the company assures that some improvements have also been included:
- Increased touchscreen reliability at every boot
- Boot sequence cosmetic improvements
- Fix for fixed HDMI output not working after disconnecting
- WiFi performance improvements
- An updated version of Steam bundled for first boot on clean / OOBE images
- BIOS 100 for drives with Micron memory and BIOS 29 for drives with Samsung memory
- Kernel driver updates for WiFi, audio, GPU, and other components
This is a significant change for many users, especially those who ordered the entry-level base edition of this handheld console with only 64GB of internal storage. However, indeed any Steam Deck owner will appreciate these extra 14 GB in which we can download one more game, for example, or have it available to take care of our SSD drive.
After the first delay concerning the announced initial dates, it is expected that the first units of the Steam Deck will begin to reach the first users who reserved them from next February 2022, so it would be expected that all of them arrive now with this new lightened version of Valve’s operating system.
