Thanks for the response!

I actually have a half-written article about how now is the time for someone like Steam to step up and release something like this. Unfortunately, the article is stalled because I finally got around to doing some research. SteamOS looks promising, until you realize that it hasn’t had a release in the past 2 years (since July 2019). There are alternates out there — GamerOS looks promising and has since been renamed to ChimeraOS. Also the list of supported games on protondb looks to be pretty impressive.

I will say that now is a great time for a big player like Steam to make something secure, open-source, and free and copy one of the moves that Windows is making here and make their store deeply embedded within the OS. That would be a great way to gain the toehold needed to actually make a splash and create some competition in an area that has needed it for quite a while now.