That may very well be the official stance, only officially supporting SteamOS in much the same way games used to only officially support a single major distro, often Ubuntu. However, I don’t see it actually stopping you from playing on other Linux systems. The functionality is there at that point. It’s just a matter of making sure you have whatever it depends on from the Deck.
So it seems like if you’re using Office on desktop, not SaaS, but they do offer it in a browser, so would that count? Technically, if it’s in JavaScript or something like that, computing is handled locally, but it still feels close enough to count.
These apps aren’t SaaS, but their alternatives are in at least some cases. LibreOffice competes with Microsoft Office, for example, and Microsoft wants people to pay a subscription for it, although I think you can still buy it outright. Pretty sure I’ve heard similar for Adobe products. Not super familiar with all the options, so can’t say if it’s true for all of them.
Running a server is very doable. There are packages to deploy and configure almost everything for you and removing a ton of headache.
Getting your email recognized as not spam by the major providers is pretty much impossible. You need all sorts of stuff to help verify integrity including special DNS records and public identity keys, but even if you do everything right, your mail can very easily get black holed before it even reaches a user’s inbox because of stupid shit like someone abused your rented server’s IP years ago, and you can’t seem to get it off everyone’s lists.
Email as a decentralized tool has effectively been ruined by spam and anti-spam measures. You’re effectively forced to use a provider because it’s near impossible to make your outgoing mail work as an individual. I think some of those anti-spam measures are anticompetitive, but I do think some are just desperate attempts to reduce the massive flow of spam.
They’re probably clearing out leftover stock from the first model. I suspect they’re moving to just the OLED model once the LCD models are gone. So maybe, but I wouldn’t consider this a sign it’s coming.
Battery life seems a tad low unless you’re playing somewhat demanding games. The Steam Deck does have some power optimization settings you can use to up your battery life, and you can set them on a per-game basis. I haven’t played with them myself, but I think they’re in the menu that comes up with the … Button on the right side.
I don’t think Valve would help implement something like that. They’ve shown a lot of initiative in trying to push Linux into the mainstream for gaming, and a move like that would be counterproductive to that goal.
Plus, it ignores the fact that the Deck isn’t trying to be the only piece of hardware in the space, just the first to prove it’s commercially viable, and they succeeded in that. Competitive devices are coming to market, and when gamers start buying them, it’s going to seem foolish to whitelist JUST the Deck.
Rockstar’s only semi-viable play of that nature is to attempt to require SteamOS as your Linux distro, but I see no way to do that so you always and only block other Linux distros.