Uhh, I'll pre-emptively TL;DR my Steam Deck chain rant. Yes, the Steam Deck has annoying software issues~ and yes, the tech support community for it is awful.
ANYWAYS, my biggest issue with the Deck is the OS. Don't get me wrong~ I love Linux, I am in love with Linux, I want to have children with Linux... but SteamOS? It ain't it.
There's... so many issues I have with it. I'm holding myself back to not rant about every little quirk with it, but I think you get the general picture with this problem you're having.
The Steam Deck community isn't very good with tech support. As you said, they just give you the usual "restart your device, update your drivers..." junk. Hell, I sometimes worry for the Deck communities tech literacy...
The first 6 or so months of the Steam Deck, the on-screen keyboard had HALF A SECOND of delay. That's simply unacceptable on Valve's part, but what's more worrying is how nearly no one noticed or cared. This was an issue that affected everyone, yet most Steam Deck users lack the tech literacy to have even noticed it. Not being able to feel half a second of delay while typing is uh, really worrying.
There's nothing wrong with tech illiteracy~ but it makes troubleshooting Steam Deck problems a bitch, since very few people in the community know what they're doing, and unfortunately the Deck is riddled with a bunch of issues like that.
Personally~ I sidestep most of SteamOS's quirks by just running a different Linux on it. It's equally as undocumented as SteamOS is, so it's still a bitch, however I have more tools in order to fix it. Most of SteamOS's issues are just praying that Valve fixes it in an update, meanwhile just running a generic Linux allows you fix it yourself, which is still a terrible solution, but somehow more reliable than Valve. I mean, you've seen it yourself, most people just tell you to factory reset the Steam Deck~ because in a lot of cases, that's the extent of your control over it.
As you said, "But if you want to use emulators or a non-steam game that doesn't gel with Proton, something's going to fuck up beyond your control.".
Unfortunately, despite SteamOS being a pretty vanilla Linux setup under the hood, almost none of it's drivers are available elsewhere, yet another reason why I'm not happy with the software side of the Steam Deck.
Was this rant mostly unrelated to this 1 month old blog post? Absolutely! But you aren't alone with suffering with the Steam Deck's software and sub-par tech support community, which is a shame since the hardware is PHENOMENAL. Excellent build quality and comfort, and runs everything I could ever hope for.
At least you knew enough not to install Windows on it. Glad you got this issue figured out!
Void
Can I add you on Steam?
Chdonga
Sure PM me your friend code