Not trying to be snarky, but I'd like to understand who you think the steam deck would appeal to? The original article, and the comment you're replying to seem to want pen input to do work/draw art, and like the tablet form factor (presumably for the large display), neither of which the steam deck provides.

With "only" 16gb of ram, a relatively meagre 8 core 6800 series APU, and small screen it wouldn't make sense for most software developer workloads, and because of the attached controller(s) it's not super portable so not great for content consumption.

Other than gamers, who likely don't even care that the steam deck runs linux (and in fact are hindered by it in some ways) is there a group you can imagine that would appreciate preinstalled linux so much that the steam deck makes sense over the surface pro or even a framework?

While i have a LCD Steam Deck and i agree you can do almost anything you want on it, i do not think you should use it for a production environment. The design and supported OS is clearly intended for gaming the way Steam wants you to game on it. This works almost perfect. Couple of minor glitches here and there. But all Steam Deck verified games work perfect. As was intended.

Of course i tinkered with it. Steam doesn't care and gives you lots of options. From installing Windows on the go to a sd card, to emulation software, to a full linux desktop environment. This is almost pure freedom, but it works far from perfect and is also not the intention. It's a superb tinker device. You can almost mod it to anything, overspec it, put it to other uses, etc. It's your call. It is like if Steam says "Hey you do you, go and have fun. We will not officially support it, but if you want to go ahead".