ARMDeck

ARMDeck takes a phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, wipes Android and boots a mainline Linux kernel on postmarketOS. On top of that runs the Steam client for ARM64 in Game Mode, inside gamescope, the same compositor the Steam Deck uses. Windows games run through Proton ARM64 and the FEX x86 emulator. The result is a dedicated console: no apps, no notifications, just Steam.

One person cannot port every phone. ARMDeck is the shared stack plus a contribution process, so the community can bring it to more devices and keep them working.

postmarketOS runs the hardware. Steam needs glibc, postmarketOS uses musl, so Steam runs in a Fedora container that shares the GPU, sound and home folder with the host. It is not a virtual machine and costs no performance. Steam starts in its Steam Deck mode. Its power, brightness and update calls are answered by small ARMDeck adapters on the host. Proton translates Windows calls to Linux, FEX translates x86 code to ARM64, and Turnip (Mesa) drives the Adreno GPU through Vulkan.